How To Seduce A Wife

2

Louisa caught her breath as Nicholas kissed her again. She wasn’t brave enough to tear at his clothing as many of the other patrons of the pleasure house were doing to their men. She yearned to feel his skin against hers, to see if she could reach the sexual heights he had shown her such an intriguing glimpse of.

“Come on.”

She allowed Nicholas to take her hand and lead her out of the large red and gold salon and into a quieter hallway lined with white painted doors.

“Where are we now?” she whispered as he continued to walk down the long line of closed doors. Each door had a small plaque. She tried to read some of them, but found that only added to her confusion. What on earth did ANCIENT ROME or A MEDIEVAL FANTASY mean? It was almost as if they were titles of books or paintings.

Nicholas stopped and held her close. “Do you trust me?”

She studied his expression. “Yes, of course.”

His smile was tender. “Good. Then close your eyes, count to five hundred, and then open the door and come in.” He kissed her hard on the mouth. “Don’t worry, I’ll find you.”

“But...” He kissed her again and then walked away, leaving her facing one of the doors. The handwritten sign on the door simply read LOUISA . With a sigh, she closed her eyes and began to count. She’d said she trusted him and had agreed to come to this oddly exciting place, so what else could she do but obey his surprising request? Her body was already quivering with a strange mixture of anticipation and arousal.

When she finished counting, she took a deep breath and opened the door. Darkness met her gaze, and she stepped forward onto a wooden-planked floor until she could see the faint outline of a lantern. Around her were several large, stacked barrels, a torn sail, and what looked like a mast and rigging. For some strange reason she could smell the sea, and a small breeze lifted her skirts.

She had almost reached the pool of light surrounding the lantern, when a body crashed into hers and she instinctively yelped. A large hand covered her mouth, and she was pinned to a man’s chest.

“I’ve got her, sir!” Instinctively, Louisa kicked out at the man’s shins and he laughed. “She’s a feisty one, Captain. Be careful she don’t rip your balls off with her teeth!”

Hearty laughter met the man’s ribald remarks, and Louisa fought even harder. Whatever was going on, she had obviously blundered into the wrong room. Where was Nicholas and who on earth was manhandling her? Whoever he was, he smelled like a wet kipper. Two other men appeared with lanterns in their hands, and she gaped at them. They were dressed as sailors, one with an eyepatch, the other with a thick beard and a cutlass clasped in his hand.

She kicked out even harder. “Let me go!”

“Not until the captain gets here, my lady. He doesn’t like stowaways, even pretty ones like you.”

Louisa’s thoughts swirled, slowed, and settled on a most peculiar notion. This scene was almost identical to the one at the beginning of her favorite gothic novel. The very one that had gone missing from her room. She took a deep breath and hoped she was right.

“Unhand me, sirs. You don’t know who you are dealing with. I’m Lady Clarissa Devine, daughter of the Duke of Clifftopville. He will have your heads for this!”

Crude laughter and jeers greeted her retort, and for a moment she wondered if she’d gotten it completely wrong. Then another figure joined the three men, and her throat dried up completely. It was definitely the pirate captain, his billowing white sleeves edged with lace, the neck of his shirt open to display a hint of dark hair and his muscled chest. A long blue sash was tied around his waist, tight black breeches, and top boots completed his attire. Louisa hardly dared look at his face as he swaggered toward her.

“What have we here, Dawkins?”

“A lady, Captain, well she says she’s a lady, but no real lady would be hiding aboard a pirate ship.”

“I was not hiding, sir. I fully intended to confront this, this brigand.”

A rakish smile displaying excellent teeth greeted Louisa’s challenge, and the pirate captain moved even closer. He forced her chin up and stared down at her, his blue eyes stern.

“Aye she is a beautiful wench, and indeed a true lady. I’d recognize Lady Clarissa anywhere.” He nodded at the crewmen. “You may leave us now. I’ll take care of her.” His eyes narrowed. “I’ll teach her a lesson or two about creeping aboard my property.”

“’Tis hardly your property, sir, when you stole this ship from my father!” Louisa retorted.

“I stole nothing. Your father is the thief. He stole not only my ships but my birthright from me.”

“You lie!” Louisa opened her eyes wide and threw herself away from him as the other sailors disappeared, leaving her alone in the semi-darkness with the pirate captain.

His hand snaked out and grabbed her shoulder, bringing her hard against his chest. “It matters not. You are mine now, and I would claim my prize.”

Louisa closed her eyes as he kissed her possessively. His hand roved over her buttocks, bringing her up against the thick bulge in his tight buckskin breeches. She gasped as he threw her over his shoulder and marched purposefully toward the narrow cot in the corner. She landed on her back and he was on her immediately, his hands busy with her laces, stripping her out of her over gown and her bodice to reveal her old-fashioned stays and shift.

He reared over her, his gaze hungry, and produced a knife. Louisa couldn’t help but moan as he cut through the tight lacing of her stays and tossed them to the floor. His mouth descended over her breast, and he caught her nipple and sucked hard. She writhed against him as his fingers tangled in her hair and then lower to tease and taunt her other breast. He shoved one leather-clad knee between her legs, opening her even wider to him.

The silk of her stockings felt too thin against the heat and hardness of his thigh. He moved up, and his knee met her mound and pressed against her most tender flesh. She could do nothing but hold on to any part of him he allowed. Soon her hips moved in rhythm to his urgent suckling, heat built between her legs, and she moaned his name. “Please.”

He brought his head up and stared down at her. “What do you want, my little minx?”

In the book, this part of the scene had never been very explicit, so Louisa had to find her own words. “You, I want you.”

He arched an eyebrow and whispered, “Aren’t you supposed to make one last desperate bid for escape?”

“Oh, yes!” She shoved at his chest and managed to roll off the bed. “I’d rather drown than become your plaything, sir!”

“You’ll not escape me.” He caught her easily and brought her face down over his lap, pulled up her shift to expose her bare bottom.

Louisa stared down at the floorboards and realized she couldn’t move. “You aren’t really going to...” She gasped as his hand connected with her buttock, and then did it again. She began to grow unpleasantly warm as he alternated his smacks between her cheeks.

Suddenly, his hand slipped lower and slid between the heated wet folds of her sex, teasing and enticing, penetrating and then withdrawing. His palm settled over her most sensitive bud, and he buried two fingers inside her. She shrieked as his other hand descended on her heated buttocks, felt the twin pressure of the pain and the pleasure his hands could bring to her, felt it until they blended together into a blaze of desire that consumed her.

With a harsh sound of need, he brought her upright and down onto his thick waiting cock. Her scream was buried in his mouth as his hands took control of her hips. He soon had her moving up and down his shaft, bringing her closer and closer to a fiery explosion that threatened to shatter them both.

She climaxed and heard him groan, his fingers like iron bands on her hips keeping her down onto his still hard flesh. With a roar he stood up and, still holding her, returned to the narrow cot where he laid her down and continued to pound into her. His strokes shorter, yet more powerful, his mouth fused with hers as he came deep inside her.

She came again wrapping her arms and legs around him, biting his shoulder simply because she could, and because she wanted him to experience the wildness of the feelings he aroused in her.

* * *

Nicholas levered himself away from Louisa and stared down at her ruined shift. With a smile, he drew his dagger and slit it from top to bottom. Her breasts were flushed, her nipples hard and tight. Between her legs his cock still nestled, trapped in her luscious folds. Even as he enjoyed their joined flesh, his cock demanded more and began to fill out. He withdrew and crawled up the bed until he straddled her breasts. He wrapped his fist around the base of his shaft and touched the tip to her mouth.

“Make me hard again, wench. You know how to do it.” She didn’t argue and he liked that, liked that she had fallen so happily into the character of the heroine and allowed him to flaunt himself as the pirate captain. The lurid dialogue from the book might be ridiculous, but it had created a curious sensation in his loins and on his lady. Perhaps he should consider it a fine work of literature after all.

He leaned forward and eased the thick crown of his cock between Louisa’s lips. He was already half-erect and it wouldn’t take much to have him wanting her again. And he intended to fuck her to the best of his ability. She should never forget this night, or the many nights that were to come. Never forget that he was all the man she needed—with a little help from her obviously fully fleshed- out fantasies.

“My lady...” He moved his hips into the rhythm of her sucking, let the pleasure build slowly before he withdrew his cock from her mouth. “Turn around and place your hands on the wall.” She got onto her knees and turned away from him. He paused, one hand stroking his shaft, to admire the sleek curve of her arse, her back, and the wetness already sliding down between her thighs. His seed, his woman. His to do anything he wanted to with—if she was agreeable.

Nicholas knelt behind her and rubbed his aching cock against the crease of her buttocks. He reached around to cup her breasts, stroked his thumbs over her nipples.

“You are beautiful, my captive. I’m going to enjoy taking you like this, from behind, where I can play with your breasts and your pretty little sex, where you can only open yourself to me and beg me never to stop, to stay inside you forever.”

“Yes.”

He’d long forgotten the script he’d so carefully learned. Louisa needed to know that sex was not all pretty words, that it could be graphic and crude and messy. He needed to know that she could accept him as he was, his wet, hard cock demanding entrance as often as he could persuade her to accept him.

On that thought, he slid inside her, enjoyed the way her muscles clamped down on his shaft, the heated wet glide of her flesh against his hardness, the kick of her heartbeat. She could be enough for him: he sensed it, perhaps had known it from the very first. If only he’d allowed himself to see it.

* * *

Louisa came again, and again he kept moving. She was moaning his name constantly now, the pleasure so intense and her body so sensitive that she’d forgotten how many times she’d taken him inside her. He’d demanded everything she’d had to give, taken her to heights of pleasure that she’d never dreamed of, shown her quite comprehensively that even dressed as a pirate he put all fictional pirate heroes in the shade.

With a deep satisfied groan, Nicholas collapsed over her, his breathing as erratic as her own, his heartbeat slowing and finally returning to normal.

“Nicholas?”

“Hmm...?”

“Whenever I dreamed about the pirate captain, he always had your face. I always hoped...”

He rolled off her and lay beside her, his blue gaze fixed on hers. “Hoped what?”

“That you’d be my hero. In bed or out of it.”

His mouth curved in his generous smile. “I’m glad to have been of service, my lady.” He brushed the corner of her mouth with his fingertip. “And I’m also glad that you told me about that blasted book.”

She wanted to blush but had neither the energy nor the necessary shame left to try. “There is another book that I love almost as well as this one.”

He came up on one elbow and looked down at her. “There’s another one?”

She smiled into his eyes, finally confident that if he was willing to go this far to please her, he would be willing to continue entertaining her deepest fantasies. “Well, there is this knight who returns from the Crusade. . .”

He placed his finger over her lips. “Perhaps you could tell Madame Helene about it. I’m sure she’d love to help you.”

Louisa sat up, wincing as her body protested. “You asked Madame Helene to help you organize all this?”

Nicholas shrugged. “That is her business, to provide opportunities for her guests to enjoy their most erotic fantasies.”

“Did you come here earlier this week, then?”

“I did.”

Louisa smiled at him. “That explains why April was so concerned about me the other day. She must have heard the rumors that you were out on the prowl again.”

His brows drew together as he glared down at her. “And you assumed I would do that?”

“I was told that every man eventually takes a mistress, and that I should be grateful you intended to spare me the worst of your bestial nature.”

“April never said that load of ridiculous drivel, did she?”

“No, that was my mother. April just assured me that it was not my fault, and that when I had provided you with an heir or two, I should take a lover of my own.”

Louisa gasped as Nicholas brought her back down onto the bed and loomed over her. “You will not take a lover.”

“If you will not take a mistress.”

“I have no intention of taking a mistress. I saw what havoc and humiliation that caused my mother and sister. I have no desire to do that to my own wife!”

His biting words no longer scared her. She wrapped a hand around his neck and kissed his nose. “I’m glad to hear it.”

He kissed her and his voice sounded gruff. “Then you believe me?”

A warm sensation coalesced in the region of her heart. “Why would I not? You’ve stooped to reading and acting out a gothic novel in a sexual pleasure house just to show me how happy you intend to keep me in bed. What else could a man do to show that he cares?”

“What indeed?” He moved away from her and handed her the remnants of her shift. “You might want to cover yourself before you move away from the bed.”

She studied the ruined garment. “Why is that?”

He grinned as he stood up stark-naked and bowed toward the other end of the room. “Did I forget to mention that these rooms are sometimes opened to the other guests? I wonder if they enjoyed it as much as we did?”

Louisa stared at him open mouthed. Was he telling her the truth? She grabbed the sheet from the bed and hastily wrapped it around her. Nicholas offered her his hand to help her crawl off the bed, and Louisa buried her face in Nicholas’s chest.

Nicholas started to chuckle. “It’s all right, my love. There’s no one there. I’d hardly do that to you on our first night here. Mayhap another time?”

She thumped him hard on the chest, and he laughed even more and hugged her tightly. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do to get back at him yet, but she was certain that with Madame Helene’s help, she’d find a way. Nicholas led her through another door where a maid helped her dress in a different set of clothing that Nicholas had brought for her.

She met him in the hallway, her mask firmly in place, her smile bright. He looked down at her, his head on one side. “You have forgiven me, then?”

“For tonight.” She tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “The pleasure you brought me far outweighed the embarrassment.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” He hesitated. “I would never do that to you; publicly humiliate you with another woman.”

She smiled into his eyes. “I know. And I doubt I will ever want another man in the way I want you.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss his mouth. “I love you, Nicholas. I know that is a terribly unfashionable thing to say to one’s husband, but I do love you. I loved you from the first moment I saw you arguing with April at her birthday party.”

He touched her cheek. “Even though she is infuriating, I love her, too.” His smile was beautiful. “And, although I cannot claim to have fallen in love with you over the teacups at April’s, I do love you.”

“Then we are lucky, aren’t we?”

“Lucky?”

“To be married and thus free to be as unfashionably devoted to each other as we wish.”

“We can start a new fashion,” Nicholas said. “We’ll become as popular as my sister for our devotion to each other.” His gaze darkened. “Would you like to go home? I’d like to see you naked in my bed, and love to sleep beside you.”

Louisa bit her lip. “As long as we can come back here one night.”

He grinned. “I’ll ask Madame Helene if she’ll renew my membership. If you are included, I’m sure she’d be more than happy to oblige.”

“And you’ll ask her about my medieval knight?”

He pretended to groan, but she knew he was intrigued by the idea. Louisa smiled at her husband, the man not only of her reality, but of her dreams. And what possibly could be better than that?